Reunited and it feels so good…

Me, a broken motherboard (which I'm willing to let go of and sell to you for a bargain price of $99!!!), and a still-alive dog. Life is good.

It’s back!

I had to call them to learn it was repaired…but let’s not sweat the details.

And in case you thought those brain dead, weed-soaked losers at the computer place just PRETENDED to swap out my motherboard with a used motherboard for a mere $400 USD…well, take a gander at the picture posted here. They gave me part of a stereo and sold me on a fairytaleland story that this uber-electronic piece of whatever was the old motherboard. Or maybe it really is the old motherboard?

Whatever. What the hell do I know motherboard from Ouija board?

Anyway, I’m happy to have it back. Basically unaltered. Still of the smudgy screen and food-filled keyboard. But actually turning on and still with those (better be goddamn brilliant at these prices) first ten pages of the new book.

In other news, fed up with the world and otherwise over it, I retreated to the tub yesterday afternoon to read the latest issue of Elle.

I know what you’re thinking. Elle? That’s crap. It’s full of pictures of shoes.

And it is.

But they’re really nice shoes.

Really.

Although someday, should I ever be rich and able to afford said shoes, I will strive to rise above such materialistic stupidity and instead of buying a single pair of Manolo Blahniks, I will feed an African orphan or buy someone some vaccines or something. Seriously.

Anyway, shoe fetish aside, it turns out that after a bored sulky hour in tub, Elle is so much more.

It’s suddenly like saying you read Playboy for the editorials or the articles.

Except it’s TRUE!!!

My jaw dropped as I found myself reading this fairly amazing essay about a woman who goes to visit her best friend from high school who was formerly a nerd named Gretchen who moved into a canyon in southwestern New Mexico, started sleeping in a cave, rebranded herself ‘Loba’ (Spanish for ‘she-wolf’) and became a goddess of sorts. In the domestic goddess kind of way, but still.

Anyway, it was a really amazing recounting about how the author goes and spends a week with Loba – forging across seven rivers to get to her encampment – and the ‘re-wilding’ she experiences as a result.

Quick summary aside, the best part of it, HANDS DOWN, is the following passage:

“It was as if someone had taken my wiry, buzzing adolecent friend, Gretchen, and dialed her down to a lower frequency. She spoke quietly, gazed at me openly, and allowed long beats of silence to pass. I filled those gaps with questions, in my accustomed-to-competing-with-street-noise-and-small-children voice: When did they get their solar panels? How long did it take to cook nettles? What kind of bird was that singing outside the window?

Loba, who was standing at the counter, rolling up grape leaves and stuffing them with the pine nut and cabbage mixture for dinner, started to seem rattled. “Before you ask another question,” she said, with a sweet kind of firmness, “I want you to think about whether it is truly important for you to have the answer.”

It was like suddenly someone turned on all the lights.

Lights I didn’t even realize were installed and draining pricey electricity and somehow-in-ways-my-tiny-pea-brain-can’t-quite-think-through-and-ruining-the-earth (like Al Gore says in an Inconvenient Truth. At least I think that was what he was saying.) through the power-draining wires. Those lights.

They were turned on. Suddenly.

And what I’m trying to say is that those words have changed my life.

Not so much that I’m going to curb my own incessant chatter, but if you’re talking to me? About something deadly boring? Particularly if you’re telling me a long-winded story about your job or your coworkers or (worst of all) your arch enemy coworker?

I plan to pose you just one, gentle, kind, sweet, loving but ASSASSIN FIRM point:

Before you speak one more syllable, I want you to think – long and hard – about whether another human being could ever possibly give a sh*t about this boring story.

Think you're so smart?
Maybe you're tired of all the technological issues, and want to take over and reduce the number of heart attacks I have per week?
Send a note to the Webmaster, Dozer! (And if you don't hear back, no doubt it's because he has trouble using the keyboard.)